SEO for Social Media: Using SEO Principals to Boost Visibility on Social Media

As any social media manager will tell you, going viral requires a hefty dose of luck. However utilizing SEO for social media is a strategic and tangible way to improve your brands visibility when creating and sharing content. Many of the basic elements of website SEO can be applied to social media to ensure your content is seen by relevant audiences who are interested in your brand and the type of content you post

With the advancements and trajectory of AI technology being used for content creation, authenticity is crucial. And that means not only authenticity in content but also in organic social media, video, and, gasp, paid media advertising. 

When looking at social media, how can a brand ensure that it can stay as authentic as possible while incorporating SEO strategy to reach the right organic traffic users?

SEO for social media is gaining momentum and becoming more mature in how users are utilizing it; and users are wising up on how social media impacts search engine results pages.

We delve into SEO for social media, here. A few items to look out for:
Keyword Research
Implementation
Vital Features You’re Missing
Speak Your Keywords
Formatting Your Content

Keyword Research

Conducting keyword research and identifying valuable keywords to incorporate in your social media strategy is important for both your brand and your consumers.  As you may know, there are long-tail, more niche keywords and short-tail, more generic, and typically more competitive keywords.  Both are extremely valuable if you can properly align your strategy with the keyword intent.

It’s two-fold. You must find the keywords and phrases that resonate with your brand and are relevant to the product or service you provide. The other side of the coin is understanding not just your target audience but also what keywords they’re searching for and how they search for those phrases on social media.

Specific keywords fluctuate based on the evolution of how people search, so be sure to incorporate semantic SEO practices into your strategy. Semantic SEO looks at the context and not just the keyword — so even if a specific keyword has a high monthly search volume one day and a few months down the road it has a low monthly search volume, you still have your bases covered by incorporating variations of that keyword that are still relevant to the subject matter.

Implementation

It must be strategic in how to add keywords and phrases to your social media posts and profiles. Think of your SMART goals, first. What is the ultimate goal of your brand being on social media? Brand awareness? Higher revenue numbers? More users to your website? Regardless of what your goals are, keywords must be chosen specifically to drive users to the end goal. 

So, how do you end up doing that? Well, it’s not difficult but SEO for social media is laborious up front; plus, it takes time (as said for many SEO implementations), and you have to implement them and tweak and edit as you see fit. 

Here are a few things to do when it comes to implementing SEO on social media platforms:

• • Add alt text to images (this is an item that should be done for SEO purposes on websites and social media).
    Not only is adding alt text to images important for added SEO on websites and on social media, but its attachment to website accessibility is vital.
  • Add captions and/or transcriptions to videos that are uploaded as part of the social media post
    We’ve likely all been there… you’re watching a video on your phone or laptop and need to mute, don’t have earbuds to put in but you’re commuting and on the subway, or you simply always have captions on, adding text to screen is important as more video users have captions. We’ll touch more on captions and why it’s important in a bit.
  • Like a website’s page with higher value keywords (i.e. on a homepage or service/category pages), ensure that keywords are used… smartly.
    On a website, that would mean the keywords are used in meta data as well as weaved throughout content; on social media, that means the keywords would be laid bare as part of the bio and on captions/descriptions on each post.

Use those keywords or phrases in posts, including in comments or descriptions. This also includes implementing keywords into hashtags that are used so they’re easier to be searched and clicked on.

• • • Use subtitles in video content on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok
    • Tag your location so your content can appear in social search results
    • Say your main keyword out loud on YouTube and TikTok
    • Incorporate SEO into your file management process by using keywords and key phrases in the video file name

Vital Features You’re Missing

We’ve already touched on image alt text and captions (or subtitles) when you’re implementing SEO for social media – or frankly, SEO in general – and that is important, but keep in mind that the simple things also need to be updated. 

What are these things? 

Items like your “About” feature on an Instagram page or on your X (Twitter) bio, or ensuring that your hashtags found in profiles – regardless of what social media platform it is – are relevant, timely, engaging, and honest in their reflection of the brand.

Think about it, not only are hashtags a crucial part of social media (users search for them on every site), but a bio needs to be catchy and attractive to brand-loyal users and those who don’t know anything about your brand. 

If the keywords that are presented on your bio and in your hashtags don’t align with the SMART goals (as mentioned previously) that might allow for users with high intent to come to your brand, then you’re likely going to miss out on those KPIs that are important in the social media world (like engagement rate).

Speaking Them Into Being

Yes, that’s right, even speaking those keywords is what needs to be done. If you say the keywords out loud, then algorithms, especially those on certain social media platforms like TikTok, will reward you and prioritize those posts.

Although, keep in mind, saying a keyword isn’t all that is needed. Saying a keyword (or keywords) with intention is crucial. Adding in a seemingly-random keyword that doesn’t fit in context with the rest of the storytelling of a video is not going to help the case. Make sure that any identified keywords for social media are intelligently placed throughout the script so it’s natural to speak and natural for video watchers to hear.

Are you not sure if the script sounds and flows naturally and normally? Make sure you do a few run-throughs of speaking it out loud, both by yourself so self-editing can take place, and with a friend or coworker, so that anything more unnatural to other’s ears can be tweaked.

Formatting Your Content

Proper SEO structure and formatting, just like correctly incorporating keywords, is an important part of SEO for social media. There are new features to social media platforms that are constantly being introduced that users and content creators must adapt to.

For instance, a new feature (that’s in beta) on LinkedIn is a video tab. Within the tab, like on TikTok, videos featured are vertical. Want those videos to show up and attract viewers? Put into place those items that we’ve identified like speaking keywords and adding social media copy that is optimized to the fullest extent that it can be. Not only that, because that newest feature is similar to a TikTok or Instagram media asset that is one size, format the video correctly so repurposing the video can be done more easily and efficiently.

Looking to get more impressions or users to find your content on a social media site like Pinterest? Do you have a Creative team that are highly skilled with social media templates that can be adapted to changing sizes like on Twitter if you’re adding between 1 and 4 media assets? Make sure, especially if you are looking at having photos and videos be brand approved, to add titles and subtitles (that incorporate your keywords!) on top of the enticing imagery, that are the correct size, to your posts.

Social Profiles Ranking High on the SERPs

Want to get your name out there, especially when you want to own branded terms and keywords? Ensure that your social media profiles are optimized fully. Despite social media posts and profiles not having direct correlation to SERP positions to search in general, profiles often show up high on the SERPs when users search for brand names, so make sure that you’re taking advantage of that. 

Profiles are linked within the Knowledge Panel and posts are previewed within the SERP. That means that every post published on a site such as Instagram and Twitter, for example, could populate on the search engine results page. 

What Does SEO for Social Media Mean?

Just remember that, as posting on social media isn’t a ranking factor, it’s important to have a strategy for SEO and a strategy for social media. In the long run, having a strong strategy for both is that there’s a *possible* result for a tweet or Instagram post showup on the SERPs.

Ready to work with me on social media and SEO strategy initiatives? Fill out the form below to get a conversation started with the Logical Media Group Sales Team!